Champion of Champions

They became team mates at McLaren last year – but their F1 careers up to that point were very different.

Both made their F1 debuts with top British teams – although Williams had gone two years without a win when Jenson Button made his debut with them in 2000.

He was something of a stop-gap appointment by the team who had just lost Alessandro Zanardi but had Juan Pablo Montoya arriving for 2001. That left Button on his way to Benetton where he had a poor second season.

Despite a better year in 2002 alongside Jarno Trulli, Button was dropped by the team. He switched to BAR, beginning a seven-year stint with the team which would change names twice.

He finished runner-up to the dominant Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello in 2004. Two years later, after the team became Honda, he broke his Grand Prix duck in a wet race at the Hungaroring having started 14th.

Hamilton arrived in Formula 1 the following year – and their fortunes during that season couldn’t have been more different.

The McLaren driver had a championship-contending car at his disposal and used it to great effect. He finished his first nine races on the podium, matched world champion team mate Fernando Alonso blow for blow and came within a point and a gearbox glitch of winning the title.

Meanwhile Honda produced a disastrous car and Button usually languished at the rear of the field. The following year brought more of the same, but this time Hamilton went all the way and clinched the title in the final race of the year.

But their fortunes reversed in 2009. McLaren lost their way and only a late-season recovery allowed Hamilton to win twice.

Meanwhile Button’s uncompetitive Honda metamorphosed into the stunningly quick Brawn. He won six of the first seven races of the year, putting him so far ahead in the championship that even as other teams caught up with them Button couldn’t be surpassed.

For 2010 the pair teamed up at McLaren. Although Button was perceived by some to be joining ‘Hamilton’s team’ he won two of the first four races of the year.

Hamilton pegged him back as the season went on with three wins of his own, and ended the year ahead of Button in the championship.

Which of these drivers should go through to the next round of the Champion of Champions? Vote for which you think was best below and explain who you voted for and why in the comments.

1 How many points they scored in their career, adjusted to the 2010 points system, divided by the number of races they started2 The percentage of races in which they were not classified due to a mechanical failure3 How many points they scored in their career, adjusted to the 2010 points system, divided by the number of starts in which they did not suffer a race-ending mechanical failure

357 comments on Lewis Hamilton vs Jenson Button

@David, to class Button and Webber as average drivers shows your lack of drivers knowledge. There are different ways to drive a car, while I respect the attacking style of Hamilton, there’s no need to dimiss Jensons style. Both himself and Webber nearly completed a full GP on one set of tyres this year, that’s not average driving.

no way, Hamilton is clearly better than Button. Hamilton was competitive in every season he took part (except 2009, due to the car), while Jenson won in a clearly superior car and managed his advantage in the second part of the season.

When you say “clearly superior car”, you may want to look at the actual qualifying times from even the early part of that season. There wasn’t actually much in it compared to the Red Bull, which was also a “clearly superior car” in the second half of the season.

When you say “managed his advantage”, well, he’s clearly was better at that than Hamilton was.

A “clearly superior car” in a field which at most for 4 tenths apart in a car which was a massive compromise and with basic development as the team had no money, as opposed to a Red Bull this year which was fter half a second clear of its nearest challenger. Hmm.

And now they have more money, look at what they came up with. Money doesn’t necessarily equate to innovation or quality.
That aside, Brawn actually had more money than you assume. Honda left the team with enough money to pay wage bills for a year plus some change. And Hundreds of millions had already gone into designing and building the cars before Honda pulled out.
Don’t make it look like the car was a spur of the moment miracle.

Hamilton but to be honest I think Jenson is a really good champion. This year in a car that wasn’t built for him and he didn’t even fit properly in it at the beginning he won two races with absolute class, he was magnificent at Monza and on race day he was a match for Hamilton’s pace and was incredible at Brazil to finish just behind his team mate after a dreadful qualifying. The problem with Jenson is his qualifying. In the Michelin days that used to be his strength but last year he really struggled.

At the beginning of 09 I was really critical of Jenson. Actually, I was a really annoyed moron. I was bored of him winning and the Brawn seemed like a rocket but it probably wasn’t compared to the RB6 of last year and for the majority of 2009 Red Bull were actually the quickest. Jenson did the job and deserved his title even if it wasn’t as good as Alonso’s textbook 06 campaign. He beat Rubens when he had to even when Rubens liked the car he would still make mistakes and end up behind Jenson. Noone else did as good a job as Button that year and the next year he showed on occassion he could beat a great talent like Hamilton.

All champions have ended up in the right car at the right time it could be argued; Hamilton won his title with 0 car failures, Schumi had dominant cars in 02 and 04, Vettel had an RB6 that was a second quicker at times in qualifying but at the end of the day they have to get the job done. There are so many variables. Heikki was usually closer to Lewis when the car was rubbish in 09 and when Lewis teamed up against Fernando the Spaniard hated the brakes and was getting used to the tyres but when Lewis tested on Michelin he didn’t like that as much but that isn’t against Lewis it just shows that things have to come to a driver if they’re to win and they have done for every champion and driver at some stage.

Lewis could be a mega talent but he’s nowhere near the complete package Button is. Button can think and Lewis can’t. Lewis and Jenson are similar in the race but Hamilton nails qualifying. Thinking about it actually makes this more difficult than I thought. Lewis can learn and grow though and he’s already a star so I’ve voted him but if Jenson can fix his qualifying woes then he could threaten Hamilton a lot more this year.

Very well said Steph, thanks. I had many of the same thoughts. I think ideally Hamilton will learn from Button how to think a bit more and I believe we saw him noticing how important it was early in the season, losing the race against his teammate.

Button also seemed to do better at “managing his advantage” as VXR so aptly explains in a post higher up the page. Sure Button thought he could have done that better than he did in ’09, but Hamilton seems to start overdriving under strain – he should learn to stay a bit calmer from Button.

Still, like you, I went with Hamilton because those things can be learned to some degree, while Button’s lack of finding pace on off days seems harder to repair.

Utter farce you can’t learn how to think.
Mclaren trust that Hamilton can be on the limit all the time, hence they adopt the riskier strategy for him.
They often give Hamilton the simulator option to execute. Which is why he is hardly ever in a position to change strategy.

I think its very possible. Senna was the perfect example of a driver who learned how to think more and keep himself out of trouble. His earlier years in F1 were punctuated by races where he overdrove and cost himself. I do however get the feeling that Lewis is not going to change.

How many time Mclaren has to say they don’t built car around drivers so people can’t stop with “the car wasn’t built around button” card to justify his limitation? Last year was Alonso first yeart at Ferrari and he trashed Massa.

Raikkonen said something similar. Basically that all this blather about drivers developing cars and designers designing cars to suit drivers is nonsense. Teams build the fastest car possible and drivers drive what they’re given.

Big difference between Button’s win and every other win from the last 25 years-ish is the Brawn got hardly no development whatsoever, compared with Hamilton in 08 where every race saw new components making the car even faster.

I think a lot of haters don’t care that he won six from the first seven in 09. That’s Schumacher-esque stuff.

I do have to admit that at the end of those seven races I was hoping there would be an end to it, yes. Nothing against Button though, and didn’t expect such a clear lack of improvement from the Brawn to bring it about – if he hadn’t won so much, Vettel would have probably breezed to a boring WCC with just as many one-man/team wins, so I guess it is good he did win them after all.

Firstly your point is incorrect, Brawn had a truck load of developments like every other team all throughout the seasons. its just that quite often they didn’t do what was expected and sometime didn’t work at all. If your point is to ssay that he won it with a car that performed without development, it is still a bad one to make. Particularly given the brawn had such a superior performance advantage for the first seven races of the chapionship.

I don’t hate Jenson Button but it does irritate me when the british media wants to compare him with Lewis. Some even have the nerves to say he’s better. Can you imagine 24 drivers like Button? nursing tyres waiting for the ones ahead to pit to make flying laps in clean air? That’s all Jenson Button is good at.

Button sure isn’t as exciting as Hamilton, but he really does some great overtaking.

Actually it’s how Button won the 2009 championship. Often Button and Vettel found themselves overtaken at the start by a KERS car. Button DID manage to overtake these while Vettel was not (until the pitstops).

At the end of the 2009 season Button had some problems qualifying, but he managed to gain places at the races just by applying risky overtakes when needed and keeping his nose clean when that was better.

Hamilton won (but only just) his championship when his team mate performed even poorer than Massa did last season. Hardly what you’d call a ‘competetive’ team mate. So it was no surprise that all of the ‘best bits’ found their way onto Hamilton’s car. Which, if truth be told, was a far superior car to the Ferrari’s. Ferrari only won the constructors championship that season because they had too decent drivers in their car.

The best bits probably found their way to Hamilton’s car, but only by one race not more, and for the better part of the season, the cars were on par. To the best of my knowledge, no part ever gave more than a tenth of a second in performance.

If we put Hamilton at about the same level as Alonso, then we can assume Massa is not fully at the level of Hamilton based on Massa’s results against Alonso.
We can then deduce that if Alonso is roughly 0.3 second’s faster than Massa, Hamilton is at least 0.2 seconds faster than Massa.

From this assumption, we can safely conclude that Mclaren didn’t have the faster car in 2008 because Hamilton never had that much of an advantage over the Ferraris. More oftten it was the Ferrari that was ahead.

So we can thus conclude that the Ferrari was actually much faster then the Mclaren. Heikki was driving the car at its true potential, Hamilton was taking it way beyond its potential, same way Alonso did in 2007 while at Mclare, and 2010 in a Ferrari.

When I saw the title on the home page I thought “darn, this one will be a hard one, plus it is two of my favourites head to head”.
But then it turned one of the easiest :-)
When I think of it it is easy – Hamilton is much more of a fighter and winner than Button.

And it is not the stats – the lousy Hondas skew the stats and make them look worse for Button.
It is more than that – just look at their approach to races!

Button seems to love the underdog position – was in an impossible situation, drove well, did not win because of the inferior machinery/luck/whatever.
This is no champion mindset.

A stark contrast to Hamilton, who usually loses because he fights a bit too much and really hates when the car is not up to scratch (“The tyres had gone off, I’m heavy like a behemot and can’t even keep up with the f… Renault” – think it was Turkey 2009, while really pushing as much as possible).

in a way this pair reminds me of the one at williams in the early 2000’s. When the car was perfect, ralph schumacher, was a match to montoya, but when it was flaw, montoya went much better.
So my vote goes to hamilton. Besides he is a little better than button in the wet, in qualy and in the dry.

We know very well who Alain Prost is but one factor negates introducing Prost into this debate and that is the Mandatory tyre stop and reusable engines.

With a mandatory tyre stop you are allowed to abuse your tyres a bit to gain an advantage, where by it becomes easy to defend your position in the latter stages of the race. It is almost pointless preserving your tyres when your engine wont allow you make any gain from it.

Besides Button only “conserves” his tyres when he is running in traffic and lower positions, while at that same point in time, Hamilton is chasing down Webber or Vettel for first position.

Hamilton wins this easily.
Has driven brilliantly in all 4 years that he has been in F1 and smashed Button this year after Canada
Button is a very lucky champion,only a quick Brawn in the first half of the season meant he won the title although giving him credit he did smash Rubens in the first 7 races of 09 and drove well in Brazil.
Overall though an average driver who moans far too much,great drivers drive round problems when the car is not perfect,Button can’t and Hamilton can.

If you have a good car, you capitalize on it. 6/7 is an achievement to be proud of regardless how good the car.

Another main reason – Brazil 2009. A world champions drive if I’ve ever seen one. Superb.

To those complaining of his complaining, who was the one that called the car a “dog” as soon as the luxury of not having a competitive one arrived?

I greatly respect both drivers but Jenson wins out for me.

Those comparing this year, bear in mind Hamilton is essentially McLaren’s homechild, been with them since 14 and must have greatly put his input on the driving style of the car. What Jenson’s done is proven he a true champion by taking on a tough challenge, won races using skill and intellect and settled into a team like a slice of cheese on a tuna melt.

One more thing – he was by far the best world champion for what image he portrayed for the sport.

I wouldnt go so far as to state that last part of your paragraph. There’s no way to quantify how Button portrayed a better ‘image’ for the sport as a champion, and it may be bordering on dangerous territory as far as what you mean by ‘image’ as compared to Hamilton.
I also wouldnt put so much stock in the McLaren being suited fully to Lewis’s style, as what happened earlier in the season with Button winning should prove otherwise. Infact Button’s season arc hit his peak early, then sloped down, if the car was suited to Lewis, it would be the other way around, as McLaren would then be trying to set-up the car to suit Button’s style more.

Unsurprisingly, the voting is already 3 to 1 in favour of Hamilton. LOL

Who is he going to be compared with next, Jackie Stewart?

Voting on here must be a bit like asking kids who currently listen to Radio 1 to vote for the best song ever. They aren’t going to bother listening to and voting for anything other than what they’ve recently heard.

Raikkonen is just,just better than Vettel VXR at the moment but if Vettel wins the title next year,then my vote would go to him.
@debaser91 is spot on with his comment.
I’m in no way a totally biased Raikkonen fan,others yes are totally biased and Kimi obviously is nowhere even the Top 20 of the greatest of all time and will lose in the next round.
Also other fans are totally biased especially Lewis’ ones but he wins this one hands down.

Button also has more than double the starts that Lewis has, so it would be pretty shocking if he hasnt at the moment picked up on some strategic nuances during a race.
It does NOT mean that he is more intelligent, rather that he is more experienced in race situations because he was encountered almost any occurrence imaginable.

That’s the biggest bombshell of round 1. Going into 2011 Mclaren have the strongest team pairing, I voted for Hamilton as he has been one of the most exciting driver to watch on the grid.Even on a bad day he have something in his bag.

Formula 1 is about RACING and COMPETION,not who can talk a lot of PR or smile better at the camara. Lewis Hamilton brings pasion and emotion to the sport. You only need to look at him to know if he’s happy or mad. He wants to win every grand prix even if he doesn’t have the car to do so… while others are counting points they have and points they need. People don’t buy tickets to see a fashion show.I don’t waste 2 hrs to watch a car parade. For me, Lewis Hamilton is a true champion.

Let’s be honest, who do we look forward to see racing? Jenson Button? Really? or Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton?